Analysis Of Ozymandias By Percy Bysshe Shelley

The image was a shattered statue remaining only the face of the Greek king. Where beneath the stone image was written:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

The poem titled "Ozymandias" is a sonnet, written in loose iambic pentameter, where the first stanza has eight lines and six lines for the second stanza. Most sonnets end in a rhyming couplet but this is an exception. Both stanzas are dedicated to the description of the stone image. In stanza one, readers are given a clear picture of how the statue was found, the damage that had befallen the statue, the pride and arrogance portrayed by the statue, etc.

The following are the themes of the poem:-
(1) Futility of wealth and status: With the little that is left to remind the
readers about a kingdom and its  once upon a time powerful king; human wealth and status is truly a futile acquisition.

(2) Leadership and its inevitable trait of pride: The facial description of Ozymandias' stone image in lines 4-5 proves that pride is an inevitable trait of all rulers:
"Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command" (lines 4-5)

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(3) The immortal quality of things surpass the mortality in human: This theme reminds me of "Ode to a Grecian Urn" by John Keats where the beauty of the lady drawn on the Grecian urn lasted very longer than the beauty of any living lady. In this poem titled "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, it is shown that immortality is better that mortality because after the king in question has long lived the earth and vanished, his sculpted image still survived damage and wreck and unspeakable circumstances of life.

The mood is mild and the tone revealing. The voice of the poem is in first person singular point of view, according to the opening line of the poem:
"I met a traveller from an antique land"
The setting is an undisclosed place which might on the road or anywhere. Another setting of note, is the desert which the poet referred to as "antique land" in line 1; the antique land is described to be a
"...colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away." (According to lines 13-14)

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Assonance in line 1 "an antique" Alliteration in line 2 "two vast and trunkless" Imagery in line 4 "Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown"
Irony between lines 10-11 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

"The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed" in line 8 of the poem refers to the attitude of Ozymandias towards those he ruled. Figuratively, with the way the words in line 8 is arranged, it can be considered a synecdoche where "the hand" and "the heart" are used to represent the king. There is also an inversion in the line_ in terms of word order. The normal arrangement is supposed to be "The hand that fed them and the heart that mocked".

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)

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Analysis Of Ode To The West Wind By Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy B. Shelley was an English Romantic poet born on the 4th of August 1792 at West Sussex, England. He died at the tender age of 29 years old on the 8th of July 1822 in Italy.

Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley is a praise poem written to portray the sweetness of influence and power possession though many poetry analysts have suggested all sorts of motives. Some have claimed it's an elegy others have claimed otherwise; amidst diverse claims, what if Wikipedia has things to say?

Which brings us to the question: what does wikipedia has to say about the motive of Shelley in the poem "Ode to the West Wind"? The knowledge archive stood on the fact that the poet's previous poems (The Masque of Anarchy, Prometheus Unbound, and England in 1819) share the same subject opinion with the one on discussion
table. Wikipedia opines that_ since most of Shelley's poems have the themes of political change and role of the poet_ is of the believe that every poet should be the voice for societal change.

Are you hoping to find your favorite poetic devices in the poem? Yes, you can find many instances of metaphor, repetition, simile ("like flocks" in line 11), alliteration ("wide West Wind" in line 1), and personification ("the blue Mediterranean where he lay" in line 30), allusion ("Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay" in line 32), and many more in the poem.

In the poem, cloud, death, cold, dead, leaf, wave, autumn, etc are found multiple times in the poem. She desired to be part of the West Wind's instrument of change by saying "Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud". Another thing of note is Shelley's inspiration which remains temporary awaiting rebirth and renewal. "The sense of renewal is captured in the image of the lyre. He calls on the West Wind to make him a lyre so he can recapture his poetic creativity. Other images in the poem are from spring and summer which prefigure the removal of the poet's inspiration and affirm in university."

Structurally, this nature ode is divided into five parts with each part having 14 lines (i.e. fourteen lines in five places make a total of seventy lines) the fourteen lines are in five stanzas where first, second, third, fourth stanzas consist of three lines each but the fifth stanzas are two lines. Not only that the end tone of the lines rhyme with each other, the lines are mostly pentameter.

Just the same way, John Keats chose inanimate over animate in his poem "Ode to the Grecian Urn". In terms of beauty, the Grecian urn is everlasting while human beauty is limited to time, aging and death. Percy Shelley also followed the same footstep. Beside the theme of nature and its powerful influence in the poem "Ode to the West Wind", the poem also shows that nature is better than human in terms of strength. Shelley so much envied the strength of the West Wind to the extent that he longed to be servant of the West Wind_ knowing quite well that he couldn't measure up in strength.

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)

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